


the cold pressing in

by togglemaps



Series: trope bingo round 11 [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Sharing a Bed, Trope Bingo Round 11, discussion of randyll tarly, trope bingo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-13
Updated: 2018-10-13
Packaged: 2019-08-01 06:04:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16279175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/togglemaps/pseuds/togglemaps
Summary: Sam was shivering. Ghost, curled up against him, was trying to keep him warm, but it was probably cold like Sam had never felt before. When he’d arrived, Sam said he’d never seen snow before he passed through the Barrowlands and white flakes began falling from the sky. Afterwards, Jon had offered to share his cell with Sam, for surely the heat from both of them and Ghost was better than just Sam, alone.





	the cold pressing in

**Author's Note:**

> Fill for my trope bingo card for the 'sharing a bed' prompt. I also kind of think this is a variation on the Canadian Shack trope, if one considers Castle Black to be a giant Canadian Shack. (No isolation though, hence the variation.) There is a discussion of Randyll Tarly and his parenting decisions but I...don't think there are other triggers here, but let me know if you disagree and would like me to tag.

Sam was shivering. Ghost, curled up against him, was trying to keep him warm, but it was probably cold like Sam had never felt before. When he’d arrived, Sam said he’d never seen snow before he passed through the Barrowlands and white flakes began falling from the sky. Afterwards, Jon had offered to share his cell with Sam, for surely the heat from both of them and Ghost was better than just Sam, alone. 

The hot coals sitting in the brazier let out a lot of heat, but perhaps adding a log or two would help? It was safer that the fire be low and gentle overnight, but if it was too cold for Sam to sleep…

“Are you alright?” Jon asked. 

“Of course,” Sam said, clearly trying to sound as if he weren’t shivering. “Don’t worry, Jon. I’m fine.” 

He hadn’t considered the possibility that Sam would find it too cold to sleep, even here. He’d considered all sorts of other things—what if Sam snored? What if he talked in his sleep? What if Jon hated having to share this small bit of space that belonged only to him in this place where nothing belonged only to him? 

There had been a few mild nights before this one and none of those fears had come to pass. They’d had heavy snows since mid-morning though, and Sam had shivered all day, quiet and uncomplaining. Sam seemed to brace himself for a blow whenever someone noticed him struggling and Jon had been consumed with frustration for most of the day. At Sam, yes, but also at Sam’s lord father. Didn’t he know what he’d done to his son? Did he care? 

It was a foolish question to ask, even just inside his own head. Of course Lord Tarly hadn’t cared. No man who would threaten to murder his own son and claim he would enjoy it would care about that son at all. What damage he’d done to that son in an attempt to make him something other than what he was was a problem of the inferior son, not the inferior father. That he was the one who’d made his son a coward by teaching him to fear even those he should be able to trust wouldn’t have even occurred to him. No doubt Lord Tarly thought a man was a coward or he wasn’t. (Jon had thought that, too, before he’d met Sam, but he’d been a boy and Lord Tarly was a man, who should have known better.) Lord Tarly thought that there was no value to be found in Sam, who was kind and gentle and smart as three other men combined. It wasn’t true. Sam was a coward and a brave man all at once. Coming to the Wall was proof enough of that. 

Jon sat up, his cloak and the fur he slept under falling into his lap. He placed two more logs onto the fire and then gathered up his things and stepped over Sam to try and settle between him and the wall. It was a tight fit, him and Sam and Ghost, but Jon managed.

“W—what are you doing?” Sam asked, shocked. 

“You’re cold. I can hear you shaking and shivering from over there. We might both be able to sleep this way.” He settled the fur and his cloak over them and reached over to give Ghost a scratch. Jon laid down and rested his head on his arm. “Go to sleep, Sam.” 

 

He woke up the next morning to the back of Sam’s head and the other boy’s quiet breathing, steady and sure and comforting. He sat up and saw Ghost sitting beside the brazier, whose coals were still warm. He reached out a hand and Ghost immediately shuffled over for pats and scratches, pressing himself up against Sam’s chest and resting his head on the fat boy’s side. 

“This’ very odd,” Sam said, voice rough with sleep. 

“The dire wolf or something else?” 

Sam scratched Ghost’s chest. “Never shared a bed with anyone before.” 

“Well you slept in armour for a bit, didn’t you? Would have been uncomfortable. Can’t have been worse than this.” 

“It wasn’t.” There was warmth in Sam’s voice, a fondness Jon was fairly certain was reserved more for him than for Ghost, who Sam was still scratching. 

He patted Sam on the arm. “We’re brothers, Sam. Or we will be. You and I can stand together against the cold as well as we can stand against Ser Alliser.” 

Sam laughed. “You stood against Ser Alliser. You and the others. I just cowered on the ground.” He didn’t even sound bitter about it. He stated it as fact, easy and uncomplicated. 

“You have other skills, Sam.” 

“I can demolish a pork pie faster than any ordinary man, it’s true,” Sam said. 

“It is true,” Jon said, laughing. He wiggled out from behind Sam and stepped onto the ground. It was hard to find a place to put his feet that didn’t already contain Ghost’s massive bulk, but he managed. He threw his fur over to his own part of the cell and tugged the corner of his cloak out from underneath Sam. “I’ll see you in the common hall,” he said.

 

More than two decades later, Jon awoke in the King’s Tower at the Wall with Sam asleep beside him. He could hear the men and women of the Watch already up and about, though the sun wasn’t yet up. The days were short this far north, even in the spring. If you wanted to get anything substantial done you had to be up early, when it was still cold and dark. The long night had not lasted so long, really, though it had seemed long when they lived it. Almost nine years, all up, by the time the Night King’s army had been driven back, with many of his men, wights and Others alike, dead and gone. (Jon remembered that first sunrise like nothing else that had ever happened to him in all his life. So long since he had last seen the sun and it was so beautiful and he had forgotten. How could he have forgotten the sun?) The Night King would return again someday. Perhaps it would be another four thousand years wait, but what was time when you lived forever? 

Jon neither knew nor cared. He would be long dead by then, he and his children’s children’s children’s children. He’d painstakingly written down everything that had happened during the long night and Sam had coped it out and sent it to the Citadel, in the hope that they would remember it. He could do nothing more than that. 

(Sam had even copied down the memories of others—Daenerys had told him all she remembered of how she had returned dragons to the world before she had died destroying the Night King’s army. He’d copied down the memories of those companions of hers who had survived the long night or had, at least, survived long enough for Sam to ask them what they remembered. Jorah Mormont had written his own, as had Greyworm, who learned to read and write in the Common Tongue specifically so he could write down his own remembrances.) 

Still, a visit to the Wall was a welcome respite from King’s Landing and the horror of politics. He had left Sansa to rule in his stead while he went on progress and had left most of the court at Winterfell for poor Rickon to deal with while he travelled to the Wall. It was easy to convince a bunch of Southron lords that it was far, far too cold for their delicate systems this far north. So cold, so barren, so inhospitable. 

The Watch was doing everything they could to rebuild the Wall, but it was slow work. It would be a hundred years or more until it was anything like it had been at it’s height and it was extremely strange to look out the window and see a Wall that wasn’t so high, not really. There were warlocks from Qarth and people from places Jon had never even heard of who struggled to master the old magics that had returned to the world with Daenerys and her dragons, to construct the mighty Wall again with their blood and toil. He and Tyrion guarded the two remaining dragons with the same vicious protectiveness that they guarded their own children. Even imagining what would happen if the Wall was still weak and incomplete when magic left the world again was enough to send a cold shiver down Jon’s spine. 

He sat at the window, perched on the sill, with a fur wrapped around him. When he’d been young here he’d slept in his clothes, but he was a king now and the room was warm, the fire burning hot, and he slept in a long shirt made of the finest cotton and nothing else. There was just enough light from the torches lit below to see people already working, wildlings and northmen and southrons and people from across the Narrow Sea, all come to do what they could for all the realms of men. Some had taken vows and some hadn’t, some would work a few years at the Wall and then return home and some would stay until their last day. Unlike Jon, most would not find their death to be merely a first death. He’d commissioned songs from the best singers in the realm to tell the stories of the Nights Watch, of the betrayal of Lord Mormont, of the battle of the long night, of the valour of these people who dedicated themselves to all people with no thought or possibility of reward. 

He wasn’t one of them anymore, but he did what he could to ensure they wouldn’t be left here alone in a frozen wasteland with not enough food or supplies ever again. They would be forgotten again someday, but it wouldn’t be this day or the next. 

When his children were older, he’d bring them here and tell them stories—of villainous Ser Alliser, of Maester Aemon, of Lord Mormont, of Ygritte, of the dead who walked and who we must never, ever forget will return again some day. One of his sons would be a king and the others would be high lords and ladies. It was important that they know. 

“Come back to bed,” Sam grumbled. “If the sun isn’t up, we aren’t either.” 

“That’s a bad rule this far north, you know that,” Jon scolded, smiling. 

Sam pulled the covers more firmly around himself, still on his side with his eyes closed, as though he could will himself into still being asleep if he tried hard enough. “The long night is done. We can sleep in if we wish.” 

Jon crawled back into bed and pressed a kiss to Sam’s shoulder. “You’re getting soft, Sam.” 

“I’ve always been soft,” he said, rubbing at the flesh around his chin. 

Jon laughed softly and rested his head on Sam’s arm. “Yes,” he agreed. “Nice and soft.”


End file.
